Kryptonite
by glassteapots
Summary: Aomine lets the past catch up to him. Kuroko doesn't.


_(After)_

The afternoon was sun-soaked, bright rays of light bleeding through clothes and skin and smothering the stuttering air conditioner of the school. Aomine lay on the roof, super-heated concrete burning against his back, shoes and shirt long since abandoned. He was supposed to be at practice, and was expecting Satsuki to arrive in a whirl of pink hair and sharp nails any minute now, but the heat had slowly melted away his energy and he hadn't had the motivation to try and stop it. The roof and his mind were empty, and so he was happy to surrender himself to lethargy.

Besides, he may be taking basketball more seriously nowadays (losing had been the kick in the ass Satsuki had always thought it would be), but he couldn't have any impressionable second stringers thinking he tried _too_ hard.

Sadly, his dazed drifting was doomed to end eventually, and right on time, Satsuki arrived to deliver the fatal blow.

Aomine lazily stretched, propping himself up on his elbows and watching Satsuki with half-shut eyes as she flung insults (and his shoes) at him. Eventually, he rolled himself onto his feet, giving a pouting Satsuki a grin and tossing his shirt haphazardly over his shoulders.

Just as he was about to start down the ladder, however, he was stopped by a gentle touch against his arm.

"Dai-chan…" Satsuki's voice was tentative.

Aomine's exhaled, slow and deliberate.

"He stopped by again today," she said finally. _You need to talk to him_ , Aomine knew she wanted to say. There were probably many things she wanted to say to him.

 _I can't_ , Aomine wanted to reply, or _he won't listen,_ or _it wouldn't change anything, anyway_.

But neither of them said anything. Instead, Satsuki's fingernails dug into Aomine's arm, and when she let him go, he pulled a smirk onto his face and winked at her over his shoulder.

 _(Before)_

The whistle sounded sharply, bouncing through the shocked stadium and ringing in Aomine's ears. The basketball hit the ground, a lonely echo in a vast sea of silence.

He had lost.

He had _lost._

Aomine stood still as the stands erupted around him, cheering for the team that no one thought could do it - cheering for Tetsu, who was so weak Kagami had to hold him up to keep him from collapsing.

And though Aomine stood still, Tetsu (weak, invisible Tetsu) did not. He limped forward, limbs trembling but head held high, and with a single outstretched fist bridged a gap that had seemed impassable, one that Aomine had forced open between them a lifetime ago.

"Try putting yourself in the shoes of the ignored."

And as Aomine looked up, as he met those sky blue eyes over the deep chasm that yawned open in front of him, he understood. He saw the hurt and pain, and he saw scars carved so deep in Tetsu's soul they would never fully heal. He saw regret and he saw caution.

He saw a glimpse of the old Tetsu, the one who had chased after Aomine, not stopping, even when he was left miles behind with only dust and tears as company.

But most importantly, for the briefest of moments, he saw the dimmest glimmer of hope.

Aomine's heart beat just a little too fast.

Satsuki was crying on the sidelines. Aomine could see her as he walked towards the middle of the court – clipboard clutched tight against her chest, eyes welling up uncontrollably.

After the teams lined up and shook hands, she tackled him, tears and makeup streaming down her face, and sobbed into his shoulder. Aomine didn't quite known what to do, but when he tentatively placed a hand on her head, she only sobbed harder.

When her shakes diminished to sniffles, she slapped him. Right in the face too, but Aomine was so surprised that for a moment he didn't even feel it.

"What the hell was that for?!" He said, hoping he sounded indignant, although he probably just sounded lost. Satsuki's eyes were still wet and her bottom lip was still trembling when she answered softly,

"You're a real bastard sometimes, you know that?"

Aomine looked at Tetsu, who was riding on Kagami's back as his entire team whooped and hollered around him. There was a smile on his face, and although it was small, it bled into his eyes, lighting them up like the sun lit up the sky.

He thought he knew what she meant.

"C'mon," he said, turning his back on Seiren and their victory (but the warmth in his chest refused to leave), "Let's go, before coach kicks our asses. We have training to do," and Satsuki, for once, simply gave him a tremulous smile and fell in step next to him.

He thought she knew what he meant, too.

The first time Aomine saw Tetsu after the defeat, he was half delirious.

The night after the match, he hadn't been able to sleep. His dreams were haunted by bright laughs and red lips, by pale skin dotted with bruises that looked like stars and a warm arm sneakily linking through his own on the cold streets of Tokyo.

It was easier to sit awake, wasting away the hours on idol magazines and porn.

When Tetsu had texted him the next day, asking if Aomine would teach him to shoot, his immediate reaction was to refuse – but he was exhausted, and Tetsu was _talking_ to him again, and the hope that had glimmered so faintly in otherwise pain stricken eyes refused to let him stay at home for another night and watch as big-breasted girls thrust against each other on his screen and reminded him of how long it had been since he cared about them.

So Aomine had agreed, and the grateful look on Tetsu's face when he showed up that night made it worth it.

After two hours of practice, Tetsu finally ran out of steam. Aomine followed him to the grass, hovering awkwardly as Tetsu sat down until the other finally rolled his eyes and gestured to the spot next to him.

For a while, they just sat in silence, Tetsu gazing up at the stars and Aomine alternating between trying not to fall asleep and stealing glances of Tetsu, because he couldn't really help himself.

Not when this was the first time Aomine had seen Tetsu in the moonlight since middle school.

Eventually, Tetsu turned his head towards Aomine. His eyes looked like they held the universe.

"Aomine-kun… thank you," he said eventually, voice soft and warm. Aomine's throat tightened, and he coughed awkwardly.

"I… of course," he said. He was pretty sure he sounded like he was being strangled.

But Tetsu's lips turned up the tiniest bit, and Aomine couldn't find it in him to care.

He wished that moment could have lasted forever.

He could blame what happened next on his exhaustion, perhaps, or the fact that he had lost the previous day for the first time since he can remember, but if Aomine was honest with himself, he knew it was because that faint glimmer of hope had wormed its way into his heart, and Tetsu's smile made it flare into a blinding beacon.

Whatever the reason, when Tetsu turned his head to look back at the night sky, and the wind rustled his moon-bleached hair and caressed the softly flushed skin of his cheek, Aomine couldn't stop himself from saying,

"You've always looked so beautiful at night."

He regretted the words the second they tumbled from his lips, and he immediately knew Tetsu did too – he froze, lips slightly parted, breath caught in his throat. The beginnings of the smile that had lifted up Aomine's soul slipped off his face as quickly as it had slipped on.

Only a few moments passed in the deafening silence that followed, but Aomine felt as though he could count up all the atoms in the universe with how many times his heart beat in those seconds.

Finally, Tetsu lets out a soft exhale.

"Aomine-kun…" he breathed, voice trembling as though it was carrying the weight of every kiss, every touch, every hurt Aomine had ever given him, and Aomine understood what he was trying to say in an instant.

 _I can't do this again_.

Those words echoed in his mind long after he hastily bid Tetsu goodnight.

And though he saw Tetsu not a day later, it felt as though the chasm that had only just started to close split wide open again.

Tetsu started showing up at Touou a month after he beat Akashi in the championship.

He never approached Aomine, but after practice he would sit with Satsuki as everyone got ready to leave, and every now and then Aomine would catch Tetsu looking at him with eyes that held the universe and his chest would tighten, threatening to squeeze hard enough to crush his heart.

During school, Satsuki followed him silently. He hadn't talked to her about what had happened, but he didn't need to – she had known from the minute she saw him the next day. She never tried to talk about it, either – instead, she kept him company on the roof on the days he couldn't bring himself to play basketball. Occasionally, when it was really bad and Aomine didn't think he could make it through school, much less practice, she would give him a small smile, slid a bit closer during lunch and let him take all her octopus sausages.

The only time that he let himself cry, she stayed with him on the roof through two classes. She held his head in her lap and stroked his hair, humming gently under her breath as his chest hiccupped with sobs, and when he finally sat up, she gave him a watery smile and a tissue.

It became another thing she never talked about.

 _(After)_

Even at half past seven, the sun was still soaking the earth in mid-afternoon heat. Aomine was walking slowly – the sun demanded he not go too fast and his back still tingled from the searing concrete, but he wasn't in a hurry to get home anyway. Lately, home had been more unbearable than usual – his parents were fighting more and more, and all too often Aomine was caught in the crossfire.

It sometimes felt as though they were fighting for possession of him.

He tried not to think about what that meant.

In any case, Aomine was not in a hurry, so he allowed himself to stop for a moment, close his eyes and soak in the sun. It was pleasant, a kind of dusky heat that only lingered at the end of the day, after all the cars had left the roads and the trees cast long shadows.

He stood like that for several minutes, enjoying the mindlessness of the end of the day. Satsuki's unspoken words had plagued his thoughts since that brief moment on the roof, and he was happy to forget about it all for a moment or two.

When he finally opened his eyes, they landed immediately on a shock of sky blue hair, striking against the sunset and tickling red cheeks, as though the universe had read his thoughts and given him the worst possible solution.

Aomine's heart stuttered.

Tetsu was standing on the corner of the street, hands picking at the end of his shirt. He was looking down, bag in between his feet, as though he were waiting for something.

Aomine turned around before he could do something stupid.

Just as he was about to start walking back the way he came, however, a clear voice rang down the street. It was the voice that used to whisper sweet nothings in his ear, sooth him after another of his parent's fights, laugh bright at his lame jokes as if they were hilarious.

"Aomine-kun!" It called out. Aomine paused. He couldn't find it in himself to escape the pull that voice had over him.

Apprehensively, he turned around. Tetsu was walking towards him, looking a little unsure, but his jaw was set with determination.

He stopped several feet in from of him, bag swinging awkwardly by his side. Aomine's heart rate picked up rapidly.

Tetsu seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"Aomine-kun…" he repeated. His voice was softer this time. It was the voice that had told Aomine he loved him, and it made his insides ache.

Aomine felt like he might be about to cry.

"Can we talk?" Aomine noticed that Tetsu's hand was shaking slightly.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and nodded slowly. Tetsu took another step towards him. Aomine wanted to push him away, to tell him he was too close, that he couldn't handle this (but Tetsu's eyes held the universe and Aomine didn't stand a chance).

"Aomine-kun… I don't think I can do this again," Tetsu started, and Aomine trembled. It was what he had known, what had been so obvious that night under the stars, but to hear it in Tetsu's voice, to see it become a concrete reality…

And suddenly Aomine was angry.

"Is that what you want to talk about? Because I _know_ that, and I'm trying to respect your wishes, I really am, but you can't just keep hanging around, waiting for… I don't know, things to become normal again," he said, so frustrated that his voice shook, and Tetsu looked startled.

"You didn't let me finish, Aomine-kun," he said finally. Aomine had to look away, to take a deep breath, because it felt like at any moment he might either punch Tetsu or kiss the living daylights out of him.

"What I mean is, I can't do what we did again," he continued, voice giving nothing away, "I won't put myself through that. But… we've both changed." His voice began to waver slightly. Chancing a glance at him, Aomine felt like he had the breath knocked out of him.

Tetsu was looking at him like he had hung the damn moon.

"Daiki… would you like to start over?" Tetsu's voice had gone immeasurably quiet, but his eyes burned with hope.

Aomine swallowed, throat scratchy, and tentatively reached his hand out to Tetsu. Tetsu, who, despite everything, had come back to him, who had never lost faith, who had broken him down just to build him back up again, whole and new.

Their hands met in the middle, and Aomine felt weak as Tetsu's fingers intertwined with his. When he looked up, Tetsu was giving him a small smile, and his eyes burned even brighter.

"Yes," he breathed out, and, for the first time in a very long time, his smile was completely genuine.


End file.
